1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to software packages and software development tools for said software packages, and more specifically to software packages and software development tools for modular software packages to be distributed to multiple computing systems.
2. Description of Related Art
Modular software development using graphical user interface based development tools allows a software developer to more easily, and therefore more quickly and cost effectively, develop software components for use in various applications. A hierarchical software component design allows a software developer, as well as subsequent software maintainers, to quickly understand the current processing performed by the software component and make changes or additions to the software component as required.
Hierarchical software components are generally defined as software processing threads that allow processing to be defined from the start of a thread to the end of a thread. This limits the flexibility of software components where only a part of a particular processing thread is desired to be executed in response to, for example, a particular event. Redesign of the software component is often required to allow the further subdivision of a modular processing thread into sub-components that can be executed as required. This redesign is time consuming and may yield unforeseen results or at least allow the introduction of design errors into the software component.
Therefore a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art as discussed above.